The innate superficiality of man impelled your talents. A world in which aesthetics were utilised strategically, a way to analyse, to determine, to seduce. Where beauty was no longer subjective, but instead standardised. For the eye of the beholder had long since gone blind. So imagine the boy who could spin gold with the touch of his fingers. The medical marvel. Midas. You gave a whole new meaning to the phrase “Golden Boy”, creating opulence from modesty with remarkable pace and ease. A world such as this, was a world in the palms of your hands.

You turned me into gold once, a project I assumed. You brushed the pale planes of my face with your fingertips and my skin flickered into golden tissues, lips to honey as you traced their arcs, my eyes melting into wells of amber and you stared, smirking, yet proud of your work. You told me I looked better this way and I believed you, because who wouldn’t want to be held and traced and found beautiful in consequence.

And then you were gone, and my body burned where you had touched me last and I wondered if I were to set myself on fire would it feel like you had touched me everywhere. Because all I want is to cremate in the palms of your hands for I am back where I started, bronze and lost and seared amidst your embers. You used me as kindling, to fuel an unceasing, unyielding blaze that fed your insatiable obsession to create beauty. Dorian Grey. I wasn't the only one. After me there were others, and you decorated them all as they stood in awe and submitted to your touch as you spun them round your fingers into beautiful things you'd exchange within the week. Until you met her.

For she was a cliché of syrup skin and blonde curls and didn't need your fingers to grace her flesh and turn her beautiful because she was already made of gold. There was no requisite to spin a golden web across her skin or comb through each strand of her hair until it lapped lemon waves down her back but you touched her anyway. For her lips were a perpetual shade of amber from where you had grazed and kissed and brushed with your fingertips. Even before the luteous haze you had scratched into me had waned you had turned the tears on her eyelashes into amber droplets and gone. Leaving me flecked in a coppery rust, etching the letters Au into my fingertips.